probably moved to Moscow long ago. How are you getting on? Are you in good health? Did D. I. leave for Yuryev? Will Manyasha's case be concluded soon?* I received a letter from Anyuta at some point and replied at once, but my letters don't always arrive on time, and Vladimir's letters I sometimes receive out of the order he wrote them. Although Vladimir writes now and not very rarely, I still somehow know very little about how he lives there; I know that he has enrolled in English language courses, that he somehow cannot find his footing... There's Zina with her husband blaming me for writing too little about Vladimir, but what am I supposed to write to them? Vladimir simply cannot write about his outward life. Let him write to them himself. They are not even thinking yet about moving to Russia and are doing nothing whatsoever in that direction, though it wouldn't hurt. Soon it will be the 11th of March and even Zina will be a free Cossack. Five months and eleven days—I don't know whether that is much or little. I don't know whether I will manage to leave Ufa on the 11th by the morning train, as I have long been planning. But then, in Ufa itself, apart from the mud, there's nothing bad, I have long since become a patriot of Ufa. We have finally settled ourselves—in a provincial manner—a good apartment, we eat well, and so on; in short, we have rather adapted ourselves to provincial life. Time passes like a wound-up machine; I have two lessons with splendid children. Speaking generally, I very much love to work with children, and right now the children are still splendid, especially one tiny little girl. I give lessons here to a merchant millionaire, teaching his numerous offspring (five of them). They have strict—merchant—customs, and I actually rather like how the children are brought up. They are not dressed up, they have almost no toys, they have no nannies, they enjoy great freedom, the little ones are out in the street all day, the children themselves clean their boots, tidy their rooms (even do the washing), in general there is neither snobbery nor spoiling. They study very willingly, both the older and the younger. So this youngest little girl (7 years old) is terribly sweet, with a charming character, clever, pretty, and such a diligent and attentive pupil that it's frightening. Every day she has a "terrible desire" to read, and write, and count. And the slightest thing more interesting and her little eyes just shine. She now constantly waits for me on the staircase and tells me all the events in their

* M. I. Ulyanova was arrested on September 30, 1899, and exiled to Nizhny Novgorod until the investigation was concluded. At the end of December of that same year she returned to Moscow. —Ed.